User talk:Quasar

This is my user talk page. I am an admin and bureaucrat user so I can help with many problems. Feel free to post here to contact me.

Older discussions

 * User talk:Quasar/Archive - 2005-2013
 * User talk:Quasar/Archive 2 - 2014-2015

Pending edits
I came across a few pages with pending edits from several days ago. The Recent Changes page (when expanded back to mid-January) also shows at least half a dozen unchecked pages. Is that intentional or did these fall through the reviewing cracks? --Xymph (talk) 03:16, 1 February 2016 (CST)


 * Unchecked pages are ones that no one has felt confident to review yet. Pending ones may have slipped through, or, we were waiting for somebody who might be able to verify them and such a person has never showed up. Marking a revision as "approved" is basically our stamp that we think it has at least a modicum of accuracy and completeness, and adheres to most if not all editing guidelines. Sometimes it's a matter of not having had enough time to get around to them also. --Quasar (talk) 09:31, 1 February 2016 (CST)

Hell
You sent a message saying that Hell is a place name and therefore should be capitalized but on the article of the Baron of Hell, Hell is not capitalized?


 * That was a unilateral decision made back in 2008 by an admin who is no longer a contributor to the site; nobody ever got around to reversing it. See Baron of Hell (Doom 2016) for a more recent example. --Quasar (talk) 12:26, 12 April 2016 (CDT)

Why hasn't it been moved yet? How would one go around moving it? --SuperShotgunPenguin (talk) 10:10, 13 April 2016 (CDT)


 * I opened a discussion on Doom Wiki:Central Processing with that goal. We try to establish consensus before doing these sorts of major changes. However nobody has replied to it so far. Sometimes the operational status quo here is glacial in pace. Believe me, I get frustrated with it as much as anybody. --Quasar (talk) 10:28, 13 April 2016 (CDT)


 * There is also a technical reason: FlaggedRevs prevents moves after a page has been approved. (Here it doesn't matter, I suppose, because retitling a core article would have incited discussion anyway.)    Ryan W (talk) 18:40, 13 April 2016 (CDT)

Shovelware covers
Feel free to use this picture if you think it'd fit (the pics already uploaded are smaller in resolution, but I don't know whether it's because they had that size on the source or because they were downsized before upload). That was a scan I made myself because the photo I first made with a potato had awful glare. --Gez (talk) 15:55, 5 May 2016 (CDT)


 * Sure. I've been focusing on the 110 relevant images from addoncollector.spielepedia.de which has recently disappeared off the net to get started, but it's possible that better images of some of the ones it had exist, and I also neglected to check the Internet Archive's collection which has a few too. We can hit those afterward I guess. I'm still only a bit more than half way through the AOC images x_x --Quasar (talk) 20:36, 5 May 2016 (CDT)

Wanted to let you know you can use content from our wiki
We at All The Tropes have the same license you guys do, so if you want to use content from us (TV Tropes has a license that is incompatible with yours), please, feel free, we have the same attribution requirements. In fact just made a page on the latest Doom using content from here with the origin of the content used from here attributed in the page history. Arcane (talk) 18:31, 14 May 2016 (CDT)


 * Thanks for the heads up :) --Quasar (talk) 19:03, 14 May 2016 (CDT)

Content question
Hi Quasar:

Would like to help updating contents specific to the latest DOOM game (2016).

Will there be copyright issues if contents are copied directly from the in-game Codex?


 * Limited quotations and excerpts, with proper attribution, are OK, but copy-pasting entire codex entries doesn't fall under . There are a couple already on the wiki but these need to be rewritten in our own words ASAP. I would encourage you to work as much content as possible into articles as paraphrased prose rather than dumping in material wholesale, as there is no uniqueness and, people can already read that material in-game anyway. We seek to offer commentary and exposition on the material here rather than repeat it exactly. --Quasar (talk) 01:50, 23 May 2016 (CDT)

Thanks for the reply, will paraphrase.

I've read the policies on capitalization for the site and I don't really agree with them, for example the link under monsters/enemies: "Hell knight" honestly looks like it could be improved by capitalizing the first letter of the second word. Same goes for "Quad damage".

I've looked online for capitalization standards but am unable to find a reputable one.

I'd like to know if this can be changed? For aesthetic purposes.


 * You would have to bring that up on Doom Wiki:Central Processing, but I'm pretty certain that it won't achieve consensus, as we spent the last ~7 years slowly converting to a literary convention where only proper nouns are capitalized, so that this site is more like an encyclopedic work than a game's instruction booklet. Games frequently follow an Every Word Capped for Nouns convention; even the original Doom instruction manual did this, which is why, back in 2005, this site started out doing the same. But then we realized that when you're reading an article and you run into this:


 * The Super Shotgun is a stronger form of the Shotgun distinguished by having two barrels. It uses the same Ammo and is good to use against Zombiemen.


 * That it is not only grammatically incorrect in English, but it is also harder on the eyes than the appropriate:


 * The super shotgun is a stronger form of the shotgun distinguished by having two barrels. It uses the same ammo and is good to use against zombiemen.


 * It is particularly illustrative if, we dispense for a moment with the game-specific nature of the text and imagine instead writing this, on a site like Wikipedia:


 * One will find that many Zoos have Lions, Tigers, and Bears. When fed, these Animals are often tossed a Chunk of Raw Meat.


 * Only in languages like German is capitalization of all nouns considered proper grammar. Hope this helps with why we made the change-over. Note a lot of articles on this site still haven't been converted, like most of the Heretic and Hexen articles, and this is just from A. lack of time and B. reduced interest in those games as compared to Doom here. --Quasar (talk) 09:35, 24 May 2016 (CDT)

Quasar, a final question:

If a screenshot of ingame material is taken, which license do I file the image under?

I'm thinking of adding images for the weapons section.


 * For Doom 2016 material, you'll need to avoid the license picker drop box and instead enter the following text into the image description box, after any description for the file itself:


 * --Quasar (talk) 11:26, 24 May 2016 (CDT)

Hi Quasar: Is there a naming convention for images? So far I've placed the sigils for Rune Trials under RuneTrials_.png. Do we have to add an identifier for Doom 2016 to avoid possible conflict with earlier uploads?


 * If a conflict happens when trying to upload a new image, the wiki software will prevent the upload (you have to go through a special "upload new version" method to actually overwrite an image). In general it's not required, I've just been doing it so that the names are more descriptive (because for example Imp.jpg could be from anything, while Doom16Imp.jpg is very obvious). There are no set conventions other than to have a descriptive name (ie. not something like 20160527_0001.jpg) --Quasar (talk) 09:17, 27 May 2016 (CDT)


 * OK, noted. I've just added a Supplies page. Help check if the tables look too confusing; I've tried my best to compress them to look as tidy as possible. --VyRianS (talk) 09:19, 27 May 2016 (CDT)


 * There's nothing wrong with the content per se, but I had planned on and have already extensively wikilinked to Armor (Doom 2016) and Health (Doom 2016) to cover information on these items in-depth. It is not our usual thing to lump together multiple different topics into a single article. --Quasar (talk) 09:34, 27 May 2016 (CDT)

Hey Quasar: I've placed average damage values for enemy attacks. So an attack that does 22,23,22,23,22 ... is stated as "22.5". In fact most of the values seem to be fractional. Is it better to round each value up?


 * I think it's good for now. We still seem to be learning stuff about damage formulas in this game; maybe eventually we'll be able to look at the scripting and find actual formulas and the such, who knows. --Quasar (talk) 09:16, 1 June 2016 (CDT)

Good news, The Nexus Mods is archiving the Filefront archives
Nexus Mods is in the process of archiving and transferring all the files held by Filefront to their own servers, which will include all downloads they ever hosted, which means the Doom files there will be preserved at a new home. :) Arcane (talk) 17:29, 25 May 2016 (CDT)


 * Good to hear. --Quasar (talk) 21:27, 25 May 2016 (CDT)

Warning, Monaco does not work well at all in MediaWiki 1.27
In the event you were planning on updating DoomWiki to 1.27, discovered Monaco has several PHP issues regarding certain classes in the skin and sidebar PHP files, effectively breaking it.

The conflicts appear to be related to how the classes in question use depreciated or removed methods in 1.27, but I'm not proficient enough to further look into the issue. Arcane (talk) 05:04, 29 June 2016 (CDT)


 * I'll have to do my usual analysis and testing before I consider the upgrade; I already brought the git HEAD revision up to compatibility with 1.25, but obviously that's now out of date as well. We're getting woefully behind here because I am lacking support from the server owner currently. --Quasar (talk) 06:15, 29 June 2016 (CDT)
 * Good news then. If it will work for 1.25, it works fine on 1.26, so you aren't that far behind. My version is basically yours with some tweaks (excised most of the Wikia button look for stock skin compatibility for personal preference/just-in-case sanity checks, added the Vector button circular bullet points with square dots as fallback mode), so if want to, rip off anything I did as a base for any improvements. Arcane (talk) 09:43, 29 June 2016 (CDT)

To-do list
It's been a long time since any progress was made on these topics; are they still on your to-do / to-answer list? Can you please attend to them? --Xymph (talk) 16:09, 4 August 2016 (CDT)
 * 1) Doom Wiki:RFC/Maptabs template, try "minor adjustment of 'dw-tabimg' padding to 0.4em".   And "I presume that each skin has its own .css file (so far I saw only Common.css), so if the 'border-radius' property is moved out of class 'dw-tab' into the Monaco skin .css (and perhaps other skin(s) where rounded corners don't look out of place) but not the MonoBook skin; then the corners will remain rectangular in that skin."
 * 2) Doom Wiki:Central Processing, "the templates would have to be changed to use a CSS class. We'd then define that class to apply font-size: smaller in Common.css, while leaving it normal in Mobile.css - this allows the two to present differently depending on the view being used."
 * 3) Template_talk:Doom_II_1-11, "Given that both Final Doom IWADs use the same sky-based structure, shouldn't their map templates be adjusted the same way?"


 * Always, but promising any kind of time table right now is difficult due to all the obligations I have. Thanks for summing them up in one place though, so they're harder to forget about. --Quasar (talk) 16:35, 4 August 2016 (CDT)


 * That was another goal indeed. One more:
 * * Updating map captions may be a job suitable for QueryBot. And similarly, replacing Things or Statistics sections for all stock maps once enough consensus has been reached in the main discussion that DMMPST is ready for that. Can you assist with using QueryBot for these edit sweeps? Or where can I find information how to prepare this myself?
 * --Xymph (talk) 05:01, 17 August 2016 (CDT)
 * It's possible, but it's a pretty major investment of development time. QueryBot itself is just an account; the logic that drives any action it takes is written for a custom JavaScript embedding I've created called vibconsole, which has a MediaWiki REST API library which I also wrote from scratch. It uses the login API to acquire the QueryBot account's credentials, and then performs whatever processing I've programmed it to do for that task; there's no form of AI or automation. In other words I need to be very careful when doing things like map article edits that whatever regular expressions or other pattern matching logic I write doesn't hit false positives. There is also a major roadblock that may apply to some articles in that MediaWiki requires a multi-part POST operation if the article size exceeds the standard POST limit. I've never had to deal with that case yet and haven't written any code for it, accordingly. The earlier task I did (recategorizing several hundred images) had no risk of running into that limit because image articles are so small. --Quasar (talk) 11:01, 17 August 2016 (CDT)


 * Thanks for the info. I previously wrote that I intend to replace/add to stock map articles using DMMPST output, but those alone (including Master Levels) already total around 290 pages, and then there are all the megawad series and other map pages. That number of manual updates is very tedious, something I'm not looking forward to at all, and so a development effort to perform this via your tools may still be worthwhile. Also, if ever a decision is made to alter the Statistics sections and DMMPST supports that, then re-running the edit scripts would allow to apply such changes rather painlessly.
 * I'm not sure what the standard POST limit is here, but Statistics sections for big maps (and for Hexen with its five Things tables) can go up to 9+ KB, so that is most likely too much and multipart POSTing will indeed be needed. I do have a little experience with that though.
 * Is your tooling able to do section edits like we do via the website? Then just replacing existing Statistics sections with newly generated content would bypass the need for complex regexs.
 * In short, I would certainly like to investigate feasibility of this approach further, before dismissing it and diving into a very tiring and time-consuming manual process. Can we discuss this further outside the wiki, e.g. via email? --Xymph (talk) 05:03, 19 August 2016 (CDT)


 * It turns out that the predicted 8KB limit doesn't really exist. :) Last night I successfully tested section updates via regular x-www-form-urlencoded POSTs (the Wikimate framework) up to 32KB. I quit there as I don't really care to know what the real limit is. Just a little data point. --Xymph (talk) 06:39, 5 October 2016 (CDT)


 * Upon reading that again it seems like the multipart MIME just achieves a more efficient transfer for large data and is not a strict technical requirement, so this makes sense now. --Quasar (talk) 09:42, 5 October 2016 (CDT)


 * Unindenting...

...due to time past. I'm pondering the feasibility of creating a bot script to create navboxes and to add them to new series of map pages. Additionally I could create a script to make the font sizes in existing boxes consistent. But then items 2 and 3 above need to be sorted out first. Can you please follow up on both? Here or on Central Processing? Thanks. --Xymph (talk) 05:08, 24 November 2016 (CST)


 * Hi Xymph. I put #3 on Central Processing because IMO we should at least try to get wider input &mdash; the community convention, if it exists, is gainsaid by the number of contributors choosing MAP10 when creating templates.    Ryan W (usually gone) 14:53, 24 November 2016 (CST)


 * Items 2 and 3 have now been wrapped up, leaving only item 1 (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). --Xymph (talk) 15:31, 27 January 2017 (CST)

Why a custom QueryBot?
Ryan W pointed to the for MediaWiki. May I ask why you didn't apply (and perhaps slightly customize) one of those for QueryBot work, and instead choose to roll your own scripts which have limited accessibility due to the technical foundation (SpiderMonkey, Core) they require? Would our upcoming effort to replace Statistics sections be easier to accomplish via one of those existing bots, perhaps? --Xymph (talk) 12:43, 11 September 2016 (CDT)


 * I just started out working with what I had on hand. If you'd like to try out pre-existing tools, I have no objections. Let's just make sure everything is thoroughly tested before setting it loose at large ;) --Quasar (talk) 15:14, 11 September 2016 (CDT)

Re
I wasn't aware of that guideline for creatures. It was not my intention.

My bad, sorry.

191.255.8.22 16:48, 20 October 2016 (CDT)


 * Not a problem, thank you for responding. I appreciate your constructive edits so far, but obviously we have a couple of disagreements. If you can spell out reasoning for them on the respective articles' talk pages, which will allow anybody else who has an opinion on those issues to also weigh in, then we can establish some consensus and move forward w/o seeming to clash unnecessarily. --Quasar (talk) 16:53, 20 October 2016 (CDT)

Template:Screenshot boilerplate
It occurred to me to eliminate the word "game" here (obviously not all screenshots depict games). I didn't do it yet because the template is used on thousands of pages, always through nesting &mdash; do you think there could be a server load issue? Ryan W (usually gone) 13:15, 12 November 2016 (CST)


 * We have other more specific templates for other types of screenshots, for which fair use justification sometimes needs different wording. I'm just not sure that it's necessary currently, but if you find that it is, I wouldn't worry about load until you start seeing the server throw HTTP 500 errors. It seems to be VERY conservative about updating stuff, as I'm having to use ?action=purge constantly when doing so. --Quasar (talk) 13:53, 12 November 2016 (CST)


 * You're right that there are few cases at the moment. E.g. this and this, and maybe I'll upload a DeePsea screenshot since the entire community denies using it.  :>   Believe me, I'd put it off if it required research or a policy change, but it's merely fixing inaccurate wording (I hope).


 * That's good to know about the load, thanks. My understanding is that without purges, MediaWiki processes large updates over time, like 1 transclusion for every 3 subsequent edits (to any page).  File info pages are obscure to most users, of course, so I doubt anyone would even notice before the upgrade force-refreshes everything &mdash; does it?    Ryan W (usually gone) 15:04, 12 November 2016 (CST)

Saturn beta
Sorry for the late reply, I didn't realize I was messaged since I haven't logged in here. Check Doomworld PM.Betabox (talk) 17:22, 12 November 2016 (CST)

monaco
Hi, how can i install monaco skin in my web?can you help me?--163.17.133.84 23:50, 30 October 2017 (CDT)


 * You'll want to follow the instructions on the github page for it - https://github.com/haleyjd/monaco-port - if carried out exactly on a compatible version of MediaWiki, there shouldn't be any problems. --Quasar (talk) 15:50, 31 October 2017 (CDT)


 * but my monaco view bug, can you help me?--163.17.133.84 19:28, 31 October 2017 (CDT)
 * you can use my cpanel help me install monaco?--163.17.133.84 19:30, 31 October 2017 (CDT)
 * my wiki is wikifamily.tk--163.17.133.84 19:37, 31 October 2017 (CDT)
 * this is my bug site skin.[File:22861632 998984026961562 4315274328297672907 o.jpg]--Msnhinet8 (talk) 21:27, 31 October 2017 (CDT)


 * If you have followed the EXACT instructions linked above, please submit your report in the appropriate location (click "new issue"). No one on this project is a full-time MediaWiki or PHP developer, so if we are not experiencing the bug ourselves, the chance of anyone having time to research it is virtually zero.    Ryan W (living fossil) 07:36, 1 November 2017 (CDT)


 * The first problem I see is that you (or the framework you're using) are trying to load the skin using wfLoadSkin; this is not supported as of yet. You must use standard php in your LocalSettings.php file, as is clearly stated in the install file. If you're not able to directly access LocalSettings.php to make this change, then you will need help from whomever runs your server instance to do so. If that isn't possible, then it's not practical to install Monaco. --Quasar (talk) 07:57, 1 November 2017 (CDT)


 * You have fb?--Msnhinet8 (talk) 08:06, 1 November 2017 (CDT)
 * I want to fb talk you monaco.--Msnhinet8 (talk) 08:10, 1 November 2017 (CDT)

ftp.idsoftware.com
Hi Quasar. Remaining URLs are here, here, and here. (The second one isn't wikified, so the special page won't find it.) On IRC, I think we decided that broken links were acceptable in talk archives, but just for the record. :>    Ryan W (living fossil) 18:15, 9 November 2017 (CST)

I cannot receive the confirmation e-mail
No matter how much I try, for any reason I will not receive the confirmation e-mail needed to validate it just in case I forget my password someday. Could you check this?


 * I'll see what I can do when I have backend access. Your email provider might have our host blacklisted for some reason. --Quasar (talk) 14:21, 20 November 2017 (CST)

FULLURL magic word
Um. Magic words are meant to be pretty bulletproof actually. Is it at all possible that config variables need tweaking for HTTPS still? (I'm just asking before I cross-reference another 200+ tickets, which I don't mind doing.)

P.S. "A guide for setting up TLS is out of the scope of this document" &mdash; oh really, even regarding the database and auth stuff within MediaWiki? WMF spends 18 months trumpeting its own altruism, protecting the non-technical proletariat by switching over, but hundreds of thousands of third-party installs can sink or swim apparently. Ryan W (living fossil) 03:10, 18 February 2018 (CST)

Title blacklist log
Did you ever actually activate this in LocalSettings.php after the last spam incident? I ask because I'm seeing 100% of nothing still. Ryan W (living fossil) 10:47, 18 February 2018 (CST)


 * I had erroneously come away with the conclusion that the MediaWiki devs had declined to implement it due to possible privacy concerns. I've currently enabled it and done what I think gives SpiderMastermind the ability to view it. Maybe try generating a hit against it so we can see what happens. --Quasar (talk) 05:06, 20 February 2018 (CST)


 * Four out of four attempts were stopped, as intended, but the log is still blank for me. Can you see anything?    Ryan W (living fossil) 10:27, 24 February 2018 (CST)


 * Strangely enough, no. SpiderMastermind isn't able to see anything. Seems like it's not working. --Quasar (talk) 10:51, 24 February 2018 (CST)


 * After further digging, it seems your interpretation was correct: the log was implemented, then reverted. (The second link is an inference; sometimes changes which are deemed "urgent", because the WMF decides they contravene philosophy, are done immediately without remembering to update the associated tickets.  Perhaps it was discussed on the listserv but I can't find it.)  As discussed on IRC, there is no emergency from our end, so I'll merely add this to my followup list for future MediaWiki upgrades.    Ryan W (living fossil) 06:14, 25 February 2018 (CST)

LMP upload creating inconsistency?
Sorry for another cheerful thread... There is something wobbly with this file, which we discussed on IRC when it was detected as the wrong MIME type. First, on recent changes, my last edit isn't marked as the latest edit even though it is. Then, the "File usage" section on the info page has no entries, even though I added a link immediately. It's not really hurting anything, but now I can't help wondering if it's a symptom of a backend issue. Hope that makes some sense, thanks. Ryan W (living fossil) 21:50, 27 February 2018 (CST)


 * Sorry I have no idea what is going on with it. Do keep in mind stuff like usage links take a while to populate just like categories do. Up to an hour to be precise as that's the current schedule that backend tasks are being run on. --Quasar (talk) 00:31, 28 February 2018 (CST)


 * I did know that, but it's been over a week. The first anomaly is more concerning since it relates to the process of saving an edit.  If I don't see it again, however, I suppose it's just another MediaWiki flitter.  :7    Ryan W (living fossil) 05:45, 28 February 2018 (CST)


 * A File:_____ link is a link to the File page and counts in its Special:WhatLinksHere list. A [[Media:_____]] link counts as a use of the file and generates two hyperlinks, one to download and the other to view the corresponding file page. I think you meant to use the latter and used the former instead. --Quasar (talk) 05:59, 28 February 2018 (CST)


 * Thanks; that makes sense, given that my previous ramble used the Media: form, which was indeed picked up by "File usage". Dunno why I didn't notice that.    Ryan W (living fossil) 19:43, 28 February 2018 (CST)

Timestamp of last edit to a page
Hello again. Please see here. Shouldn't the footer match the top entry in the list? I don't object to your/manc's choice of time zone, but I would think the goal is to implement it consistently. Woof woof. Ryan W (living fossil) 15:36, 4 March 2018 (CST)


 * Clearly a Monaco issue and not a wiki configuration problem in this case. I can look into it but it's not going to happen quickly. --Quasar (talk) 17:25, 4 March 2018 (CST)